Natania Barron's internet brainwave.

Watcher of the Skies: Drafted!

Poseidon upon the waves: Walter Crane (fun fact: this does actually happen at one point in the book)

It’s been a while since I was able to make such an announcement–but lo! I have completed another novel. This time, it’s the follow-up (I won’t say sequel, because it’s part prequel/part standalone) to Pilgrim of the Sky. While it took much longer than anticipated, mostly due to the ungodly amount of research that was involved, I’m happy to report that I’m quite pleased with the product. It’s a more solid draft than I usually write (see: time to write) and plot-wise it’s a lot more dense. (Even Michael, who’s a surprisingly insightful and critical reader felt the same way.)

How am I going to pitch this to you? It’s sort of… Timelords meet Odysseus in an alternate history coming of age tale. There’s love. There’s magic. There’s Kraken(s). Our main godling players are Trita Oye (Athena), Verticordia (Aphrodite), La Roche (Apollo), and of course, our main character and narrator, Joss Raddick (Poseidon). Plus Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, John Keats, William Blake, Dorothy Wordsworth, William Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Just to name a few.

The book starts in a lake and ends on the high seas, with travel in between from the Lake District to Rome and to the New World. It’s about war and good and evil, and the burden of living too long. And mostly its about the nature of love and madness and the fine line in between, and the responsibility given to those who possess power. If there is such a thing.

It’s also the longest thing I’ve written in a long time, surpassing my original goal of 100K. But, as you can see by that paragraph above, there’s a whole lot going on.

“There is no wrong, and there is no right, Calvin. It’s just a mess of mad monsters rutting in the dark.”